Stud farming catches on in Doaba

Although not much resulted from the Punjab government's drive to make farmers diversify from wheat and paddy into cash crops, farmers of the Doaba region of the state are adopting stud farming to profit from the brisk business of "horse trading".

In Jalandhar, famous for potatoes, farmers have emerged front-runners in breeding and trading horses by establishing stud farms in their fields, sources say.

Most of these farmers have the rarest and finest species of horses, the breeding of which is fetching them good money from all over the country.

Buyers book the newly born of the high-breed horses at high prices months before birth just to ensure they get the finest breed.

Sahib Parminder Singh, a farmer who has been in the trade for a year, said he had been farming by getting the land on lease as he didn't own much of it.

Parminder, though a school drop-out, said it was only due to his passion that he studied about horses and their behaviour. For this, he had to learn English also.

When he went to Jodhpur to purchase a horse of the Marwaari breed last year, the idea of trading and breeding came to his mind, he said, showing a horse he had bought in Jodhpur at Rs 3 lakh.

Similarly, Gursher Singh of Singha village, who owns more than 10 horses, termed the business more profitable than cultivating. Although he deals in local breeds, the business is still more profitable than farming.

Gursher also said most of his relatives abroad also invested a lot of money in the business, which gives a huge profit with less investment.

Talking further on his business, Parminder, who owns a stable called Unicorn Stable in the nearby Dhogri village, said that at present he had five Marwaari horses including the stallion Pawan and two mares.

As these were the rarest and of the finest species of horses, their cost was very high, he said.

He said Dalbir Singh Yadav, the brother of former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, had offered him Rs 8 lakh for his mare Rani at the annual Muktsar fair, adding that as he had declined the offer and Yadav then booked a child of Rani.

Parminder also said as Marwaari horses were highly agile, they were used in polo. The daily expenditure on one horse is around Rs 200 and hence he is in dairy farming also.

"By selling one progeny of a horse we earn what we did after selling the yield of five acres of land," Parminder said.